


Dirk: Ponder Sendificator.

by CherryMilkshake



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-06
Updated: 2013-08-06
Packaged: 2017-12-22 14:41:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/914391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherryMilkshake/pseuds/CherryMilkshake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dirk tries to solve the mind-body problem; that is, his body is stuck in Austin, Atlantis, but his mind wants to be somewhere else entirely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dirk: Ponder Sendificator.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this fanart](http://todayweareallmonsters.tumblr.com/post/55907987988) I stumbled across on Tumblr last night.

You contemplate the innocuous-looking red box. It is 25.5” across, 23.2” tall, and 25” even deep. With such dimensions, it is a good size for sending things like robo-parts for Jake to assemble on-site, but it is not nearly large enough to fit anything more than your head, no matter how you approach the problem.

It mocks you.

You try to draft a way to enlarge it, just take it apart and replace the metal sides with larger ones. But, like most Crockercorp tech, the mechanics are partially organic, consisting of odd-looking tendrils and what appear to be small insects of either infinite lifespan, or perfectly engineered to maintain their population. Despite how hard to try to research, even enlisting Roxy’s help in trying to hack into locked information databases, most of the servers no longer function properly, lacking workers to properly service them. Since, you know, humanity is extinct. And the carapaces aren’t really that into computers, according to Roxy. They’re more interested in eating the workings of them.

You don’t blame them really, since you know what the carapace cities are like, but it frustrates you to the point that all you can do is throw all your resources at the problem until you break, screaming and crying and destroying things in fits of impotent rage.

The living room could hardly be called “livable” anymore.

But you can’t destroy the sendificator, Crocker tech though it may be, because it connects you to Jake, and Roxy, and Jane in the only tangible way you have ever known. You can send Jake a piece of metal flesh that has taken shape in your hands, and you can see it later, over a grainy webcam video, clutched in Jake’s hands, where your hands once were. You wonder if the warmth still lingers post-sendification.

So you draft ways to shrink yourself down, if the box cannot be enlarged. But you were never good at biological tinkering, hence the Crocker tech problem, so your drafts and write-ups end up in your “failed plans” folder, never again to see the light of screen.

Sometimes, when the sky is dark and the world is quiet and you can’t bear to look at the grayed out names on your chumroll or read AR’s inane blathering any longer, you take off your shades and walk over to that box, typing in the coordinates of Jake’s bedroom. You picture him there, lying on his bed, and you imagine what it would be like if you could send yourself there, falling down onto the mattress in an ungraceful heap, probably onto his legs.

You wonder if his bed is soft, or if he keeps it firm. You wonder what kind of blanket he sleeps with. Is it thick and warm like yours? Or does he prefer to keep cool? What does he sleep in? You yourself love to wrap yourself up in blankets with nothing between you and the soft wool, but Jake was raised by his grandmother. Maybe he has actual pajamas? Or maybe just a designated shirt and pants, worn thin and supple by constant use.   

What would he do, if you dropped from the sky one day onto his bed? Would he be happy?

You try futilely, ineffectively, to crawl into the box, as if sheer willpower would bend physics and allow you to fit _this_ time, contrary to all your past attempts. But you end up as you always do, your head snug inside, staring at a red metal grill and hearing the hum of a biomechanical engine, feeling its vibration in your stuck shoulders.

You think back to a story Jane told you, about a guy who wanted to know how long a severed head would live, cut off from the body. He was French, you think, and ended up having a brief conversation with a freshly-guillotined criminal, who could only answer in blinks, since his throat had been cut.

Sometimes you think it’d be okay, living only for a few minutes, if, in those few minutes, you got to see Jake, for real, in the flesh, and got to feel his hands on your face as you died.

But you would never have the guts. There were too many unknown variables. Blood loss would most likely keep you from fully comprehending anything that was going on besides feeling pain (or perhaps numbness, with trauma on that high a scale), and you might not even be able to see, depending on how long it took your eyes to stop working.

This is a stupid line of thinking. You know this.

And yet, you stay put, running scenarios through your head, hoping that you stumble across _the_ plan by chance.

You switch your primary awareness to Derse, where you look at a picture you cut from a shitty magazine which featured the sleeping royalty of Prospit. You feel closer to him here than on Earth, despite the greater physical distance.

When you return to your apartment, your back and shoulders ache as you pull yourself upright and turn off the sendificator, staring at it with a sense of hopelessness. So close, and yet so far away.

You put your shades back on, and open up a new drafting plan.

  
  
  



End file.
